


You Love Me

by Strigoi17



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Bad End!Koujaku, M/M, kind of?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:08:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Strigoi17/pseuds/Strigoi17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It becomes obvious that Koujaku's falling down a slippery slope that neither of them can fix. (What were to happen if/when Koujaku's tattoos inevitable become too much for him to suppress.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Everything started out quiet.

His day began with a pale sky and the gentle, unfamiliar sound of Koujaku asleep next to him. Slow, steady breathing and the low stillness in the air alerted Aoba to the fact that he had woken up, strangely enough, of his own will. His eyes focus first on the ceiling, a dawn-painted canvas blurry from the sleep lingering in the corners of his eyes. The sheets he’s wrapped in are stagnantly cold, a pitiful protector from the outside air; the hair’s on the back of his neck immediately rise. It takes him a moment to motivate himself to turn onto his side, but he does so solely with the thought of being awake before his boyfriend.

Koujaku’s mouth is open in his sleep, a soft curve of lips and teeth; his eyes are closed, and to Aoba’s slight dismay he can already see wrinkles forming at the outer corners, a set of wings instead of crow’s feet. He leans forward and kisses them, soft gestures to the hard evidence of Koujaku’s wear and tear. An idea blossoms, and Aoba kisses the rest of him – lays his lips against his forehead, his cheeks, the scar branded on the bridge of his nose.

Despite Aoba’s best efforts, Koujaku hardly reacts. He stays still, eyes shut tight and chest slow-moving. Cuteness aside, Aoba decides to actually wake him up – and shakes him awake none-too-gently.

Koujaku wakes with immediately alert eyes but a double-crossing exhaustion in his voice. “What? What’s going—What’s going on? Aoba -- ?”

In his rush, he jolts up in bed – affectively headbutting his boyfriend in the chin. Aoba lets out a yelp, jerking away from Koujaku and nearly toppling off of their bed before Koujaku reacts instantaneously. He lunges forward to grab Aoba by the wrist before he could fall completely, long fingers closing around his wrist with ease. Slowly, he pulls Aoba back into a sitting position, cheeks bright scarlet and eyes focusing on the peaks of Aoba’s bare knees instead of his eyes.

“Sorry, babe.” He mumbles, eyes falling to his lap and rubbing the back of Aoba’s hand before letting go.

Aoba grabs the hand back not a heartbeat after it left, cradling it in his own. Koujaku’s was bigger than his, but only by a bit – hardly noticeable to anyone but Aoba. He runs his fingers up Koujaku’s, across the scars and the dull crescents of his fingernails, soaking in the feeling and letting it stain his mind. It’s an easy activity, one that lets his mind focus numbly on the lines and shapes of Koujaku’s hand and doesn’t demand an alert thought process. Aoba falls into a stupor, hypnotized.

“I love your hands,” He mumbles thoughtlessly, skating his index finger up the lifeline on Koujaku’s palm. “They’re so… nice.”

“I love you,” Koujaku replies, voice louder than Aoba’s. He was awake now, and his words rung high over Aoba’s still half-asleep murmuring. It stuns him, drags him slowly and painfully out of his sleepy haze; he looks up at Koujaku with raised brows.

“I love you too.”

“Mm.” Koujaku blinks down up to Aoba’s face, takes his hand away and wraps a strand of short blue hair around it. He speaks without thinking, an honest and impulsive observation. “I think I did a good job.”

“So do I,” Aoba yawns, raising a hand to his mouth but letting the older man fiddle with his masterpiece. “I didn’t think I’d like it at all, but it actually looks very nice.”  
“You didn’t think you’d like it?” Koujaku looks to Aoba’s eyes from his hairline, visibly offended. “Then why’d you let me do it?”

“Because you wanted to.” Aoba shrugs, smiling up at Koujaku and leaping directly into damage control. “PLUS, you cornered me during a point of weakness and I’d already said yes.”

“Well.” He shrugs back, immature, combing his fingers through Aoba’s hair before letting his palm rest at the nape of his neck. “I bugged out about it enough, so I’m glad it at least came out well.”

His hand falls, tiptoeing softly down Aoba’s neck and across his shoulders, down the length of his arms. Warm fingers trace lazy rings around the peak of his elbow, waving gentle shivers up through his spine. His nails are short and his fingertips are thick, but they move across Aoba’s skin like bare feet across ice: careful and methodic, an apt but nervous process that makes his heart flutter.

“No one expected that it would look BAD.” Aoba purses his lips, glancing down at Koujaku’s straying fingers. “I just didn’t want short hair. I didn’t think it would flatter me.”

“It does.” Koujaku cuts him off immediately. “You look wonderful.”

A pause lingers in the air where Aoba’s mind races, processes the moment and logs it in his memory. He loves him; he loves him so, so much. Instead of saying so, he says a simple “That’s because you cut it. Anyone else would have made me look horrible.”

“I don’t think so.” Koujaku cracks another smile. “It’d be pretty hard to make you look bad, don’t you think?”

Aoba’s unimpressed. “You aren’t smooth.”

“Yes I am.” Deftly, he slips his hand around to the inner crease of Aoba’s elbow and tickles him.

That, of course, was when he fell off of the bed.

There’s a thud and a twinge of dull pain in his shoulder; another thud and there’s a pain in his chest, a loss of breath in his lungs. “You are CRUSHING ME,” Aoba wheezes out from beneath Koujaku, completely at mercy to the man’s fingers. He wriggles around, kicking his feet but landing blows to the bedframe instead of Koujaku’s legs. Aoba swears, angry little curse words and made-up phrases he had picked up from Granny over 23 years of accidents and mess-ups.

“Like – like HELL – get OFF. I will kick you into next week!” He can’t help it; he has fallen completely unguarded to the enemy, and Koujaku knows it. The attacks are landed everywhere Aoba doesn’t want them to – in his armpits and on his stomach and beneath his knees, and he can’t stop laughing on either of their lives. They come in panicky chimes of choked breath and pitchy yelps, and Aoba flails desperately, slowly losing hope. Koujaku blows a raspberry into Aoba’s neck and Aoba screams a violent “Uncle! Uncle!” into the raven hair spilling over both of them.

Koujaku’s fingers still and let Aoba catch his breath. Once the younger man’s wheezes quiet, Koujaku rolls off of him and yanks Aoba into his lap, strong arms and big hands looped around his waist. Defeated, Aoba slumps back against him, head leaning back on his shoulder. “I hate you,” he whispers as he prods Koujaku hard in the side.

“You love me.” He presses a kiss into the shell of Aoba’s ear, strokes artful thumbs across his hips. The motion both tickles and sends pickles of electricity up his spine, raising goosebumps on his back.

“Nope. Not at all. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you drugged me and brought me here against my will. Where’s my lawyer?”

“Knocked him out before I put the roofies in your drink.” Warmth floods against his neck and Aoba yelps, trying to worm away.

“Too early.” He dismisses Koujaku’s tongue impulsively, swatting behind him. If they had sex now, Aoba would doubtlessly be out of commission for the rest of the day – especially with Koujaku as impatient as he was acting.

There was a part of him, closed off and buried beneath a thousand words of denial, that worried about Koujaku when he was like this. More and more lately, he wakes up with impulses and no ability to control himself, no desire to stop and think that maybe they both had things to do today. Priority and importance seemed to be draining away, replaced by the fervent need to beat every thought and idea into the ground.

Koujaku hadn’t been to work in two weeks. There were days when he didn’t eat; there were nights when he kept Aoba up by his tossing and turning before he got up and left their apartment completely.

“But Aoooobaaaaa.” He noses at Aoba’s neck, whining into his ear and kissing his hairline. Both of his arms are tight around his waist and they both know his fighting is fruitless. His legs wrap around Aoba’s and pins him down almost completely. The feeling is… slightly uncomfortable. Against his neck, Koujaku’s voice changes; it dips low in his throat and drags out across his tongue. He breathes in Aoba’s smell and nips his teeth across his sweaty skin. “I want you nooooow.”

Almost immediately and despite his best judgement, he falls limp. Fire blooms in his stomach and roars up into his neck; shoulders up, he turns pale pink. The discomfort and even the worry is gone, replaced by a stammering “I hate you. I hate you a lot.”

“You love me.”

Maybe he was being paranoid. “Happy birthday, by the way.”

Aoba’s back hits the hardwood with a grunt of slight pain. Koujaku ignores it; both of his hands fall, one to hold him above his boyfriend and the other to stick his hands in his pajama pants. Just as the first true ray of bright August sunlight filters into their bedroom, Aoba lets out a harsh breath that echoes in the air around them. The air is cold and stale and air-conditioned; he wishes he would have let Koujaku open a window last night like he suggested. It hits his bare thighs like knives as Koujaku tosses his pajama pants aside in a rush, his hand already wrapped around Aoba. He pumps in quick, erratic jerks and Aoba lets out a high, crackling whimper. Pleasure fogs up his brain and overwhelms him, has him kicking his feet out and curling up his toes.

“Slow down!” He gasps, squeezing his eyes shut. 

Of course, he doesn’t. Wet warmth clouds over Aoba’s already heated neck, the pinpricks of sharp teeth chasing an abrupt squeak out of his throat. Koujaku’s mounted him in miliseconds, and he pushes himself inside of Aoba quick enough to Aoba to let out a sincere, legitimate scream of pain. Tears line his eyes and he freezes, still as possible to not jostle him. “Koujaku!”

Thankfully, he pauses long enough for Aoba’s spine to relax and lower back onto the floor. Aoba reaches out for his hand, desperate for a gentle touch, and Koujaku complies, weaving his fingers between Aoba’s. His fingertips rest on top of the scars on Koujaku’s knuckles, and he finds himself counting his breaths.  
Koujaku moves slowly, a shallow roll of his hips that takes Aoba’s breath and sets it on fire. “Keep going,” he sighs.

It’s painful; morning sex always is. It only takes minutes, now, compared to the eons it used to take him to adjust, and when he has, he finds himself moaning out his okay to continue.

His pace is quick and sudden; Aoba’s eyes snap open and he immediately draws in a lungful of breath only to scream it back out. Koujaku had a nauseatingly sweet habit of treating Aoba like blown glass during sex; many times before, Aoba had outright asked him if they could please try something different. Aoba had gotten frustrated and it had even started a small-scale argument – but now, as Koujaku drills himself into Aoba recklessly, the friction all goes to his head. He can’t think straight, he can’t articulate legitimate thought past a handful of expletives. When Koujaku starts to give orders, it takes Aoba a moment to process.

“Tell me how good I’m making you feel.” His voice rings in Aoba’s ears.

“Holy fucking shit.” Is all he can manage.

“More,” Koujaku pulls himself completely out of Aoba before shoving himself back into him, hard enough to make Aoba squeak from both pleasure and being jolted back against the floor.

“So good!” He leaned his head back into the hardwood, eyes closed and back arched. His arms angle back, his hands balling into fists on either side of his head. “You – you make me feel so good, Koujaku!”

When Aoba cracks his eyes open, he can see Koujaku smirking above him. “Say my name again.”

Just as he gives the command, he rams himself into Aoba to the hilt. When he screams his name, it’s a sudden, uncontrollable burst. It echoes through the empty apartment, makes Aoba tense up and contort. “Fuck, Koujaku! FUCK!”

 

The bed is cold and empty. Aoba wakes up not on the floor next to Koujaku as he had expected, but bundled in blankets and alone.

He sits up slow to nurse the aching in his hips, peers around their bedroom. Negative space presses in on him, and suddenly, he’s claustrophobic. With a fistful of blankets, he slides off of the bed and wraps the red comforter around his shoulders. Trailing the overlarge sheet behind him, he tiptoes out of the room.

“Koujaku?” He yells out the question, speaking to the entire apartment. Clad only in Koujaku’s smell and his blanket, he peaks his head into each room in the hallway directly outside of their room. Koujaku isn’t in his study or the media room; no one answers when he knocks on the bathroom door.

The TV in the living room is on but that room, too, is empty. Aoba searches for a solid ten minutes for the remote, turns the living upside-down before giving in and running his hand over the power switch at the back of the monitor. The situation puzzles him, but he pushes it out of his mind like dead weight.

Upon further inspection, the kitchen is empty, too; Aoba wraps the blanket closer around his waist and leans against the refrigerator.

“Koujaku?” he tries again, louder now despite knowing his boyfriend wasn’t home. He glances at the microwave clock and see that it’s hardly noon. He sits down in a bundle of red and curls his knees up to his chest. He knew it was a horrible idea and he should have thought it out. He shouldn’t have given in as easily as he did.

He was lost. “…Where’d you go?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Aoba gets tea-bagged. (Please imagine Beni speaking in a Joisey accent.)

Overthinking is inevitable.

His hand falls back onto the floor with more force than intended; pain bangs through his wrist and he winces, a hiss bounding out of his lips. His coil shuts off with a quiet beep, signifying how useless all four of his attempts to call Koujaku had been.

The thoughts infect Aoba’s mind, corroding it like rust on a chain-link fence. They chase him in debilitating circles and spike inescapable fear in his chest like flames, so hot and so frenzied they feel icy and numb. His shoulders shake and his hands bead with sweat. Koujaku never told him where he was going before, and Aoba had never asked – but there was a rumbling fear in his stomach that told him his current disappearance was because of how he had been acting in the past weeks. Even that morning, his behavior was strange – and now that Aoba peered back in hindsight, he hated himself for ignoring it for the sake of his dick.

Thousands of improbable but thoroughly convincing possibilities attack him all at once: he could have gotten called by another Benishigure member into a fight; someone could have broken in and taken him hostage; he could have disappeared to the streets, reckless and lacking the filter needed to save him from countless bar fights or Rib wars.

He could be in trouble, and it was completely Aoba’s fault.

“Aoba.”

Ren’s voice is a swift jerk into reality. Brown eyes blink open, glancing down to the navy ball of fur curled up at his toes. Aoba’s cheeks are burning and flushed; he rubs at them impatiently. When he pulls away, his palms are wet. “Yes, Ren?”

“What’s wrong?” The slope of Ren’s forehead bumps at Aoba’s foot, a warm gesture of comfort.

“Do you know where Koujaku is?” He stretches out both of his hands, plucking Ren up and bringing him into the cover s. Without thinking, he opens the blanket and bundles Ren into it.

“No.” A pause. “Beni doesn’t either.”

Aoba blinks, scratching behind Ren’s ears as he tips his head onto its side. “Beni’s here and he isn’t?”

“No!” A red speck darts into the kitchen, flies dangerously low to Aoba before hovering in front of him. “I don’t know where he is! He left without even turning me on – he has some real nerve.”

The weight in his chest drops like an anchor, threatening to drag him through the kitchen floor. He hadn’t wanted to be right at all, but he was. Aoba knew Koujaku, and something was wrong. “He left without waking you up at all?”

“At all!” Despite his yelling, Beni zooms up to perch atop the refrigerator, eyeing Aoba wearily. “He didn’t tell you either?”

“I was asleep when he left.” Aoba shakes his head, turning his gaze down to Ren instead. “I think we all were.”

“That guy! I fuckin’ tell you what!”

Ren’s voice is much quieter than Beni’s. Nuzzled into his chest, the sound reverberates in Aoba’s lungs, deep and sedative. “He’s probably out buying milk. Didn’t you need some?”

The possibility instills a lingering calm that starts minute but blossoms through Aoba’s chest. Maybe he was just buying milk – he probably wasn’t, but maybe he was. With newly steady hands, Aoba threads his fingers through Ren’s fur. A quiet nod and a soft smile. “We do need some, yeah.”

“Here!”

A small, heavy bag collides with Aoba’s cheek hard enough to knock his head sideways. It ricochets onto the floor, bouncing once before sliding into the bottom of the counter. The teabag almost splits when it does hit the wood. “That should make you feel better!” Beni shouts from above, shrill voice bouncing off of the kitchen walls and striking through Aoba’s head with the callous ferocity of an iron-tipped arrow.

Aoba glances up, slightly annoyed, to see Beni hovering haphazardly over the jar of pomegranate tea bags. The lid is clenched hard in his talons, but Aoba guesses it may be heavier than he is by the way he wobbles mid-air. Brash or not, the gesture was of good intentions, so Aoba thanks him.

“Koujaku keeps them for when he’s sick.” The ceramic lid clatters back onto the jar with a clang. “Make some, maybe it’ll help ya.”

Aoba raises with shaky knees. Koujaku’s blanket slips down his shoulders, and he uses the hand not holding Ren to readjust it. As he kneels to grab the teabag, he shakes a few strands of hair out his eyes: it had been weeks since Koujaku had trimmed it.

Beni flits to the cupboard, yanking it open with a dramatic huff and disappearing into it. Aoba watches and listens to the long string of curses and grunts as the small bird fights through the army of pots and pans, amused until a deafening bang sounds and Beni shouts out in pain instead of annoyance. “Ow! Sunuvabitch I swear to fuckin’ GOD –“

“What’d you do?” Aoba nearly jumps onto the counter, concern weighing down his words. Beni darts forward, swinging mid-air with a stuttering wing and one eye shut. “I didn’t do nothin’! The fucking – fucking pot ran right into me, I’m tellin’ you!”

Aoba stands on his toes, first swatting Beni out of the cupboard and then reaching for the teapot himself. Beni had yanked it completely to the front, around a plethora of iron stoveware, but stalled on the threshold of wood just behind the door. Aoba plucks it up, swinging it down onto the stove and sighing out, “You tried, Beni.”

“I did perfect!” He caws angrily. “You wouldn’t even be making the damn tea if I didn’t give you the teabag!”

Brazen though he was, the bird was right. He stretches out his wing repeatedly as Aoba fills the kettle with water, sets it on the stove and pulls himself up onto the island. With a sigh, Aoba adjusts the blankets beneath him just as Beni finally works the crick out of his wing.

His chest hurts. If Koujaku was really out for milk, he would have been back by now. Ren blinks up to him, concerned. “Aoba.”

“Yes?” His voice is much, much quieter than he would have liked it to be.

“Koujaku is fine. Stop worrying; your heart’s racing and that’s unhealthy this early in the morning. You’re going to give yourself a headache.”

Aoba doesn’t reply verbally. He brings the small Allmate closer in his arms, folds him again into the blankets and curls his legs up around him. Ren rests comfortably between his thighs and his chest, a bed of blankets and Aoba’s warmth. Beni leaps into the air, hovers awkwardly without a master to perch on.

A silence overtakes the room, weighty and oppressive; it slithers into Aoba’s chest and snatches the air from his lungs. The kitchen lights are foreign and yellow, vivid beacons that barrels down on the back of his neck and jump-start the headache Ren warned him of. Hunched around Ren, his back aches fiercely; his chest is cold and his hands are jittery with anxiety. Beni wafts towards him, lingering in the air directly above his shoulder for a long moment. Aoba says neither no nor yes, so Beni plops down awkwardly on the bare slope of skin.

 

Koujaku had left his coil on his bedside table after all; curled up and shut off next to his box of cigarettes. There was no way to reach him, and he had been gone for almost seven hours now. The house was quiet, so Aoba had the speakers on: the voices of reality TV stars flooding out the uncomfortable lack of Koujaku’s.  
Aoba had spent almost three hours in the kitchen; sipping tea and hitting redial, before eventually retiring to their bedroom to find how entirely fruitless his efforts had been. Now, seven hours after Aoba had woken up, he lies in bed, soaking up the silence like old bread saturates in mold. He had spent nearly the entire day alone, listening to Beni and Ren banter back and forth without taking part in any of it, and his anxiety had worked him up into exhaustion.

Aoba’s sixth mug of pomegranate tea is warm in his hands and Ren is warm in his lap. Beni is finally in sleep mode, mutely curled up on his keyboard and blocking the left half of his Masterchef marathon. Thanks to the tea, Aoba’s muscles are calm; the pink and red August sunset gleams through his open windows, washes the darkwood floors a muted auburn and glints scarlet against Koujaku’s nightstand. Its heat trickles across the sheets, splashes against his still bare skin and lures him from mess of thoughts buzzing in his head.

Beni’s suggestion ended up being perfectly on point: after his second cup of tea, Aoba’s mind had settled and cleared enough for him to realize a distraction would be in his best interest. He focused instead on the comfort of the sun and the blankets and the dull thud of his heart in his chest. Looking away from his laptop, he lays his head back on the pillow, balancing the mug on his stomach. Gracious fatigue bundles in his chest, stretches into his limbs and layers him in drowsiness. Without noticing, he begins to doze, the half-empty mug slumping back onto his chest.

 

There is a raucous, resonant series of clatters in the kitchen. It stabs into his mind, yanks him up from the oblivious pool blankess of his subconscious and hurls him back onto his mattress. He starts frantically, spills the now room-temperature tea on his chest and nearly snapping his neck as he sits up. Taking time only to curse and brush away the excess onto the floor, he leaps up with clumsy feet. Clad now in a pair of stretched, worn-out boxers, he runs from the room, almost tripping on their bedroom rug as it skids beneath his feet. “Koujaku!”

Aoba finds him in the kitchen, stunned and confused and surrounded by a mess of pots and pans on the kitchen floor. His hand is on the cabinet door, half-open and revealing a now completely empty cupboard where Beni and Aoba had shoved the kettle haphazardly. There’s a nasty newborn bruise on his chin, pale purple against his tan skin.

“Aoba!” He exclaims, a smile etched on his lips and a fervent flame backlighting his eyes. “What’d you do to the pans?”

“Where have you been?” Aoba asks instead, eyes wide and incredulous that the first words out of his mouth are about the state his Allmate had left his kitchen. Animosity skewers him threw the chest as Koujaku gives a light chuckle.

“Hm?” Koujaku blinks, bending down to scoop up three pans at once before placing them back in their cabinet. “Oh, I was out. A couple members called me.”

Aoba’s voice was quiet and measured; not calm, but restrained. “What’d they call you on?”

“…My coil?” Koujaku blinked up at him from the floor, hands still full of pots Aoba wasn’t helping with.

“Your coil’s in your bedroom.” He informed him, placing both hands on his hips.

“Is it?” He arranged the rest of the stoveware, taking time to close the cabinet door before turning to his boyfriend and shrugging. “I must have forgotten it when I ran out.”

“Did you forget Beni, too?” Aoba’s fear was replaced with mounting frustration. His patience was wearing thin; Koujaku’s imprudent attitude was stomping on his last intact nerve.

“Must have.” He crossed his arms, turning to lean against the stove and raise an eyebrow. “What’s with the third degree?”

“You were MISSING all day!” Aoba suddenly shouts, throwing his arms out in front of him. Acid drips from his words and smacks onto the floor between them in heavy globs. “You were gone for hours and didn’t tell me before you left! And now you come home – covered in, in bruises, and you expect me not to be upset?”

His hands, tossed violently in front of him, were shivering like an addict in withdrawal. Heat bore into his cheeks and his heart slammed into his ribcage; a dizzying vertigo waved over him and he focused not on Koujaku’s vaguely hurt eyes but instead on the incandescent bruise darkening on his jawline. A ten-pound dumbbell drops in his stomach, cracking his spine in two.

“This is nothing.” Immediately, Koujaku raises his sleeve to rub at the mark, blocking it from Aoba’s view. “Really.”

“Koujaku.” Aoba stares him down, leaning back to look up at his eyes instead of his chin. There was a solid foot between them, but it felt like Koujaku was miles away. “You can’t lie to me when I’m staring at the proof. It is literally right in front of me.”

Koujaku was silent for a moment. A crease forms in his brow as they furrow, and he stares down at his hands. There’s a brand new cut, split open across his palm. “I didn’t… mean to worry you.”

“You were gone all day.” The venom in his voice subsides, replaced instead with rekindled worry. His hands swing back down to his sides. “Of course I was going to be worried.”

Koujaku doesn’t speak. The silence stretches between them, filling the house with the stone-cold loneliness Aoba had been battling all day. Neither of them know what to say, and so neither of them say anything.

“Where have you been!” Beni’s voice shatters the silence like lightning in an ashen sky. “Asshole!” A whizzing ball of red slams into Koujaku’s ear, striking his head to the side.

Koujaku comes back to life, swatting at his Allmate. “Beni, dammit!”

“Where’ve you been, huh?” He bangs into his head again, pecking at his ear. “Had me worked up all day!”

“Beni, stop it!” He snatches the bird out of the air, holds him in one hand. “I really need to cage you.”

“Cages won’t stop me!” He roared, worming in Koujaku’s grip. “You left me at home all day!”

“Koujaku.” Aoba interrupts the two of them, strategically jabbing his words between their own. “If you aren’t going to tell us who did that to you, let me patch you up.”

He stops and turns to Aoba; for a moment, it looks like he’s about to argue. Instead, he catches Aoba’s eye and promptly lets go of his Allmate. “Alright.” He sighs.

 

Aoba brandishes a clean rag and a bottle of peroxide like weapons. Koujaku’s perched steadily on the lip of the bath tub, clothes folded down and hand outstretched. Aoba’s eyes discreetly scan across the ink on his shoulders.

“So.” Aoba knocks the bottle over onto the rag; a dark ring blossoms across the white terrycloth, and he eyes Koujaku severely. “ARE you going to tell me?”

Koujaku doesn’t reply, doesn’t flinch when Aoba lays the rag, dripping wet with antiseptic, across the wound on his palm. It foams and hisses, but Koujaku is stiff and wooden.

His eyes pinch closed, lines of exhaustion straining at their corners. Crouching down in front of Koujaku, he raises the now rusty red washcloth off of his hand. He tries a different approach. “…You do realize how worried I was, right? And Beni?”

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong.” He shook his head, imperial eyes staring down to the man kneeling between his legs. “This isn’t – not like back in Glitter. You’re overthinking this, Aoba.”

“I don’t think I am.” Tearing his eyes away, he swivels in search of a bandage. Koujaku’s eyes tunnel into the side of his head, but he pointedly focuses his glance towards the bandages in his hands. “You came home bleeding and covered in bruises.”

“It doesn’t hurt.” Aoba wraps his very steady hand, and wonders if he’s telling the truth. “Honestly. It was just – just a Rib fight.”

“You’re lying.” Aoba snaps again, eyes flicking up to Koujaku without raising his head. “No one called your coil, Koujaku. I DID check.” He hadn’t wanted to sound clingy – he didn’t want to admit that he had been snooping. As soon as he says it, the sentence seems heavy and ugly on his lips.

“You went through my things?” Koujaku’s voice is more incredulous than angry. His eyebrows peak on his forehead and his mouth hands slightly open.

“You left it here with nothing else for me to go on.” He tries very, very hard to sound convincing and nonchalant; his voice cracks on the last two words and betrays his guilt. He knew it was wrong, and that fact aches deep in his chest.

Koujaku sits against the wall, tipping his head back. Aoba is hyper-aware of the way he moves: when he leans, the beginnings of pain trickle through the lines of his cheeks. “That wasn’t necessary.”

Ice bubbles up in his chest. He rocks back onto his ankles sharply, pulls his lips into a stiff, narrow line. “Look at me.”

Aoba stares up defiantly at his boyfriend. His heart beats once, fluttery and anxious, before Koujaku finally glances down at him. Cardinal red and freshly inset with cloudy purple bags, his eyes are severe and bitter. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that I had no reason to worry.”

Grunting quietly, Koujaku slides from the lip of the bathtub onto the floor in front of Aoba. The younger man backs away an inch, refusing to break eye contact.

“I didn’t… mean to.” He grabs both of Aoba’s hands, hesitant and apologetic. His gaze flicks down, focusing on their entwined fingers. The bandage on Koujaku’s palm feels foreign and coarse against Aoba’s skin. “I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m sorry.”

The apology rings deep in Aoba’s rib cage. Without second thought, he tugs his fingers away from Koujaku’s to climb into his lap. Familiar and intimate, his legs curl up to his chest; Koujaku’s fold up around him, pressing him against his chest. Directly against his ear, Koujaku’s heart pulses in his neck, slow and quiet. Long fingers drum against the pale skin on his stomach. A low, hoarse voice drums through Aoba’s chest as Koujaku leans his chin on Aoba’s head and speaks into his hair. “I don’t… I don’t remember leaving.”

The words hit like daggers. Aoba reaches a hand back, curves it around Koujaku’s cheek, butterfly-light. He stands tall, as Koujaku’s only support, but he feels so small. He says nothing back. The realization falls into place in his mind like a puzzle piece against its brothers. Like a startled deer, his thoughts bound back to the auburn swirls where black once laid, dormant and mostly innocuous. 

He doesn’t want to think about it; neither of them wants to say it. He is lost, lost as to what to do and how to help and how to deal with the impending, inescapable facts staring them straight in the face.

He ignores it.

“Hey.” Aoba writhes in his lap, turning to look Koujaku head-on. Two fingers linger on the bright, angry roses painted across his shoulder. They stretch desperately across the broad curve of tan skin, an apocalyptic line of scars. “It’s still your birthday. Why don’t we make the best of it?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Koujaku's birthday, after all, and they decide to make it special after the long day of anxiety.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***(TW for emetophobia, graphic violence and death)***
> 
> Also wow!!! this one is almost 4k words on the dot! This is the longest I've ever actually made a fic? hhaha. Thank you guys so much for leaving kudos and supporting this little baby so early in its birth, I really love you all ;w;
> 
> **update: fixed the third person-second person slip-ups...

Koujaku’s side is familiar against his; the hand on Aoba’s waist is a small blossom of calm comfort in his otherwise queasy stomach. His tie is too tight and his hands are sweaty; his head hurts, but the silk of Koujaku’s shirt is cool on his cheek.

The night is thankfully cool, underlit by the muggy August heat and bustling with activity. The Southern district is crowded full of people who all seem to know Koujaku; despite the slightly overwhelming activity, he stays hugged close to Aoba’s side. More curious than judgmental, a few pairs of eyes linger on the newly out couple.

Two months hadn’t passed since Koujaku had sat him down. Aoba remembered it vividly: the cherry blossom incense burning on his bedside table, the grogginess of a long day at work setting in on him and the hollow ache of an empty stomach rumbling in his abdomen. By then, Koujaku had learned to say things bluntly; Aoba was only half-listening when Koujaku told him that he was – after years and lifetimes of secrets and embarrassment – finally ready to tell at least the members of his Rib team about them. After three years of hush-hush dates and hidden kisses, Aoba had asked him to repeat himself.

Word had gotten around, or so Aoba had heard; Haga-San had come to him a week after, appalled and slightly annoyed. Not that Aoba was dating Koujaku, no – but rather that Aoba hadn’t told him. According to him, he’d put out a bet with Tae over who would tell whom, and was forced to call it off when neither Koujaku nor Aoba broke first. “Three years?!” He had yelled, face flushed scarlet. “You made us wait for THREE YEARS?”

It was a first; the first comfortable, confident moment Koujaku had lived with Aoba on his arm. His head was raised high and his pace was quick, almost parading his date through the crowd of teenagers and twenty-tear-olds. His hand was firm and steady on Aoba’s waist, proud of Aoba for the first time.

Until, of course, the inevitable strikes.

“Koujaku!” The street signs are neon along the slant of his shoulders and cherry red on the edges of his silhouette. When he turns to the unfamiliar voice, the whites of his eyes catch the light. Cold as a migrating glacier, he breaks away from Aoba's and lets his hand fall to his.

A group of girls – short, thin and vividly dyed – approach him, all four sets of eyes trained on Koujaku alone. Arm and arm, they muscle through the crowd as a single unit, beelining directly towards the two of them.

The hair on the back of Aoba’s neck stands on end.

“Hello!” His voice is bright and flexible; Aoba rolls his head to the side and stray away from his fingers. They clamp down on his, refusing to let him go. “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m wonderful!” She has short-cropped, lime green hair and a crooked nose ring. Her voice swings dangerously as she continues. “You’re always so polite!”

“Aya!” The one left of her scolds, flipping a dramatic and annoyed streak of blue hair from her eyes. “Have you forgotten why we came?”

“OH!” She turns, momentarily breaking away from the group. From a purse bigger than Aoba’s head she draws a box, brightly wrapped and topped with a gaudy, sparkling bow. “We heard it was your birthday!”

Aoba’s stomach flips completely upside-down.

She practically waves the present in front of Koujaku’s nose before he takes it. He does, with a deft hand; near snatching it from the air before him. He smiles with closed eyes; frosted sugar drops from his words like snow. “Oh, thank you!”  
“Open it!” Says the one on the farthest right, closest to Aoba; her hair is a deep auburn and her eyes are lined too thickly. She addresses Koujaku but stares daggers directly towards Aoba, eyebrows downturned and lips pursed. He squeezes Koujaku’s hand tighter.

“Right now?” He laughs, finally letting go of Aoba’s hand to pick idly at the fuchsia bow. Without Koujaku’s fingers, his palm is suddenly, emphatically cold.

“Yes!!” Says the one with red hair, eyes flicking to Koujaku at last. Her expression lifts like dew in the mid-morning sun. “We want to see your reaction!”

Koujaku prods the bow a final time, looping its ears around his index finger. When he yanks, the bow falls away and takes the wrapping paper with it; a box of chocolates, long, rectangular and trimmed with gold accents. They shine in the neon lights, expensive and tasteful.

His heart sinks. The little black box in his pocket seems small in comparison.

A chuckle rises in Koujaku’s throat, turning to Aoba. His eyes are bright and ecstatic. “Look! They knew I love blackberry!”

He nods, giving a light smile up to his boyfriend. His cheeks are so stiff and forced they feel like they might shatter. “Yeah! It’s awesome, really thoughtful!”

“Soo.” Nose-ring girl – Aya, maybe? – bats her lashes up to Koujaku. “What are you doing tonight? Since it’s your celebration and all!”

One hand holding both the chocolates and the wrapping paper, he twines his fingers through Aoba’s once again. “Quiet dinner a little farther up.”

“Oh?” The third girl – silent up until now – chitters. “No birthday party? Are you sure?”

“You’re welcome to come to ours!” Aya chirps, clasping both of her hands in front of her chest. “No birthday party without the guest of honor!”

“I’m old, girls.” He gives a quiet laugh, deep in his chest. “It’s a little tacky to party on your thirtieth, don’t you think?”

The cherry-haired girl frowns immediately. Koujaku’s words, though said politely, had stricken hard. She speaks quick and bluntly, an eyebrow raised and a dagger fastened to the edge of her question. Realization sinks into the curve of her eyes like the quick darkness of nightfall. “…With him?”

Her words of war fall like boulders in Aoba’s chest. Koujaku speaks through grinding teeth, still smiling. Side-eyeing him, Aoba can see a light purple vein popping in his neck. “Ladies. I think it’s time we take our leave.”

 

Once out of eyeshot of the four women, Koujaku tips the box into the nearest trash can without taking the time to stop. Shameless, he keeps his arm wrapped around Aoba, going so far as to tuck his fingers into his back pocket and hang his thumb off of his belt. At first, it made Aoba uncomfortable – and then the feeling of Koujaku’s hand on his ass settles the nervousness in his chest.

“You aren’t going to keep it?” He asks, leaning his head on Koujaku’s arm.

When he shrugs, Aoba’s head moves with him. The motion throws him off guard, and he blinks as he tries to regain composure. “Nah. I hate raspberry. Besides.”

Koujaku stops, leaning down to kiss the top of Aoba’s head. “I like blueberry better.”

 

The restaurant is huge and darkly lit, with a winding corridor that leads from the reception to the dining room. Red and yellow candles are inlaid into the dark-stained oak walls, casting candy-colored light across the hall. Aoba trips over his own feet on their way back, disoriented by the shadows, and Koujaku catches him with steady hands and a kiss to his head.

The dining room itself is better lit than the elaborately long hall leading towards it. The high walls are paneled floor-to-ceiling with deep redwood, the entire area lit by four large, lavish chandeliers hanging high above their heads. When Koujaku leaps forward to pull out Aoba’s chair for him, he does so so enthusiastically that he whacks Aoba’s shin hard enough to double him over in pain.

“Shit!” He hisses, loud over the muted murmuring in the restaurant. A few pairs of quiet eyes stray to their table as Aoba falls into his chair, lips pulled thin and cheeks puffed out in pain. He waves Koujaku to sit down and leave him be, but he hovers anxiously over his boyfriend’s chair for a few moments. Only after more patrons begin to stare does he do what he’s told and sit down across from Aoba, pulling in his chair with ease.

After a few labored, placating breaths, Aoba collects himself, scooting his chair into the small square table. Newly focused, he straightens and looks up from his lap, across the table to his boyfriend. The candle light trickles down onto Koujaku, slips wetly over his hair and his shoulders and lights up his face golden. His eyes are winged by shadows and wine-colored in the gloom. Suddenly, Aoba wants to kiss him so badly it hurts.

“So.” Koujaku’s smile is subdued and his cheeks are pink. “Do you… like it?”

“It’s nice!” Aoba nods at once. He thinks about the fight that will ensue about who will pay the bill, and his smile grows. “I can’t say I’ve ever been to a place like this. It’s very… atmospheric.”

“I don’t come here often.” He flips open the menu with one hand, laying it across the pearl white table cloth. “I’ve only come two or three times, honestly.”

Aoba blinks; there are still, inescapably, things he doesn’t know about Koujaku. He wonders about – and dreads – how long it will take until he knows everything. “When have you come here before?”

“A few members’ birthdays.” His finger glides down the leather and plastic menu. Aoba had yet to open his own, instead focused on the story Koujaku was telling. His face brightens at the memory. “This one kid – he was really quiet, he always kinda hung back behind everyone – had an eighteenth birthday right after he joined Benishigure. I thought he needed someone to warm him up, you know? So I took him here with a few of the older members, just a small party, and he was a lot more talkative after that.”

He works at the corner of the menu with his index finger. “I ended up taking a few of the older members here a few times after that. Again, just small parties, but everyone enjoyed it a lot. I don’t think some of them liked the food, though.”

Finally, Aoba opens his own menu, propping it up in his hands to see through the dim light. His face immediately falls, quizzical and slightly astounded eyes glancing quickly between Koujaku and the small, elegantly written words in front of him. “What the fuck is carnard – carnard à la rou—rouennaise?” 

He stumbles over the name, turning bright red. Koujaku gives a light laugh. “You wouldn’t like it. It’s like – like duck served in duck guts.”

“Oh.” Aoba shakes his head. Gross. “Now I see what you meant about them not liking the food.”

“There’s normal stuff.” He raises a hand covered in bandages. “Scout’s honor.”

“Okay… what about…” He skims the menu for a moment, taking in the very long list of very foreign words. “…Boudin noir?”

“Don’t eat that.” Koujaku’s eyes are wide as he shakes his head fervently. “Do not. Eat that.”

His reactions makes Aoba giggle, a light sound that makes the room seem a little brighter. “Are you scared of the booty noir?”

“No!” He laughs back, turning his eyes down to the menu. “It’s just really gross. Here – ” He points to a line towards the bottom of the Aoba’s menu, “How about the shrimp scampi? I had it once, it’s pretty tame.”

“Hm?” Koujaku points to it on Aoba’s menu. “Oh yeah, that doesn’t sound bad. What are you getting?”

“The grilled salmon.” He smiles so wide his eyes squeeze closed. Aoba’s expression softens. “It’s really good here, the Béarnaise sauce is awesome.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll have the shrimp.” He nods. “Wait – what about appetizers?”

Koujaku waves him off immediately. “You don’t have a choice there. I’m making you try the Charcuterie plate with me.”

“What does it have in it?”

“Pâté, Prosciutto, Fra’Mani Handcrafted Salumi, Mortadella, and Genoa Salami.” Says a voice that makes Aoba jump. He looks with surprise to the waiter he hadn’t realized was standing next to him, a tall man in his mid-thirties with an imperial nose but soft smile-lines around his lips. “It’s served with cornichons, Greek-style Petrou olives, pickled garlic, Dijon mustard, onion chutney and a sliced baguette. Hello, I’m Walter, and I’ll be serving you this evening. Can I start you off with drinks?”

His voice is rich but his words are rushed. Breathless himself, Aoba was caught off guard by the winding list of ingredients. He only nods, forgetting completely that he was supposed to give an answer.

“What wines are you offering?” Koujaku saves the day, eyeing Aoba with a smile. “It’s my birthday, we’re here to celebrate.”

“Tonight, we’re offering a wide selection of white, red and rosé wines.” He turns to Koujaku as he addresses him.

“Provence Rosé?” He asks for clarification.

“Yes, sir.” He smiles, turning away and walking with a swift, confident gate.

Aoba is stupefied, both by how comfortably Koujaku handled the conversation and how overall at ease he seems. “How are you so used to this? I thought you said you’d only been here three times?”

“This restaurant in particular three times.” He corrected. “I’ve brought the boys out enough times. And besides – ” He gives a sly smile. “You can’t go to a fancy restaurant without having Googled quite a few things, right?”

Aoba loved him so, so much. The box in his pants pocket weighs heavily on his leg, and Aoba shifts uncomfortably. “Smooth, babe.”

Their wine is brought to them with two delicately thin glasses. Drinking isn’t something new to Aoba; finally in his element, he lets Koujaku pour him a glass and sips at it slowly.

“So.” Aoba blinks up at him over his glass. “Happy birthday.”

“I’m having fun.” He answers Aoba’s unspoken question. “I’ve wanted to take you here for a very, very long time.”

“You have?” Aoba laughs, taking another drink of his wine. “You’ve wanted me to eat duck guts?”

“Hush.” Koujaku waves his glass at him, two fingers straying off of it to point at Aoba. “It’s just… a really nice restaurant. Of course I’d want to bring a really nice person here.”

It’s a dumb compliment, but one that swells in Aoba’s chest like oxygen in his lungs. “Shut up.”

“Tonight’s special.” Koujaku continues; he smiles so brightly Aoba thinks he would be able to light up the whole room if he tried. His voice quiets; a small child with red cheeks and a wilting daisy in his hands. “You know? I’m thirty, and I’m – we’re – finally out. I could hold your hand on the way here. I could kiss you if I wanted to. Can I kiss you?”

The way he stutters over his words is painfully endearing. Aoba leans across the table, raising off of his chair to peck Koujaku once. “Like that?”

As Aoba’s sitting back down, Koujaku gets up himself – chasing him across the table to kiss him back. Blue eyebrows draw close together and his nose wrinkles as he laughs. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Dinner goes quickly. Aoba nearly chokes when he sees the cornichons in their salad (“Little pickles!”) and Koujaku ends up feeding Aoba the scampi across the table. Between the two of them, they kill the entire bottle of wine. By the time they’re finishing their small plate of truffles, Aoba has loosened his tie and Koujaku is lounging back in his chair, all previous class trickling from his body with every word that stumbles out of his mouth. Neither of them are lightweights, but the wine and the growing lack of people are like lubricants for their minds. They only bicker for a moment on who will pay the bill before Koujaku gives up, allowing Aoba the small act of kindness.

“Oh, shit, wait.” Aoba sits back, fishing through his front pocket. “Hey, I never gave you your birthday present.”

Koujaku’s face is as if he hadn’t expected anything from you. “My birthday present?”

“Mhmm.” After another moment of aggravated struggling, he brings the box out of his pocket. It isn’t wrapped like his previous present, but sealed in a black leather box with Koujaku’s name embossed on its face. Aoba presents it delicately, laying it out on his palm and stretching his arm across the table.

Koujaku takes it with a sly smile and three nimble fingers. He eyes Aoba for an extended moment, biding his time before he opens the box.

Folded up inside of it is a gold chain, tipped at the end with a modest heart locket, crafted of 14 karat gold and engraved, on the back, with both of their names. With a giddy smile he clicks it open, revealing slightly out-of-focus pictures of Aoba and Koujaku just minutes after Koujaku had cut his hair for the first time.

“These are—”

“The selfies of us you took right after you cut my hair.” Aoba laughs with a small shrug. “I stole them off of your twitter.”

Koujaku’s face is pale pink and his eyes are wide. He gives a high, silly laugh and shakes his head. The hand not holding the box claps onto his chest, wrinkling the fabric slightly as he gives a light, woozy sigh. “This is so perfect, Aoba, thank you.”

 

The moon was high in the sky, casting a shallow grey light on them as they fought to become one.

They hadn’t left the restaurant until almost midnight; half an hour later, they had somehow stumbled into the North district, wrapped around each other like fingers locked in a promise. After being given his present, Koujaku had called for another glass of wine – more apt for celebrating, he claimed. Aoba’s hands had swept through Koujaku’s hair so carelessly and so frequently that it now splayed out in a sloppy, billowing mess of blue-black, his hair tie long lost in the damp, greasy streets. When he backs Aoba up against the side of a building, his hair falls over the both of them.

Koujaku’s lips were pressed against Aoba’s mouth, tongue slithering against his in slow, wet movements that shot vibrating sparks of intense heat through his alcohol-laden blood stream. Aoba had unbuttoned the top three buttons of Koujaku’s shirt and yanked his tie down, and now his hands slide from his hair to his shoulders, dipping through the open fabric to grapple at his chest. He moans into Koujaku’s mouth, rich and decadent and tasting heavily of wine, when scarred fingers unzip his pants and dive into his underwear. “K-Koujaku—”

“What the fuck?”

The voice, gruff and boisterous, bounces off of the filthy, run-down bricks and closes in on them. It skitters down Aoba’s neck like needles and Koujaku’s head swivels up, so fast Aoba’s afraid he may break his neck.

“What the fuck?” He laughs again, voice swinging with alcohol. He’s not ten paces away from them, and he stands taller than Koujaku with oustretched arms and thick, wide shoulders. “What the fuck are you doing, man? What?”

Both of them freeze, quiet in the suffocating echoes his words cause. Koujaku’s hands drop out of Aoba’s pants, shaking and tense. The nervousness from earlier, lost over dinner, sparks new in Aoba’s chest with an icy cold intensity.

“Fucking fags!” His words hit Aoba's ears like venom. You want to look to Koujaku, to make sure he’s alright, to calm him down from what Aoba knows, in the back of his mind, is inevitable; but Aoba's eyes are stuck on this stranger, stalled in fear and disbelief. “Are you goddamn kidding me? That’s so disgusting!”

Koujaku breaks away from Aoba, hunching his shoulders over his chest and letting out a noise from his throat that shakes Aoba’s lungs. The hair previously torn from its pony tail is splayed across his back, wiry and full of electricity that raises it on-end. Aoba wants to cry out, to scream, say his name or grab his hand – but he can’t find the words in the cold hole of his chest.

“Aren’t you the leader of that Rib team, too?” There’s a loud snort and the man leans back, hands on his stomach. “That’s fucking nasty! What are you even THINKING?”

He staggers forward and Koujaku takes a step to match him, directly in front of Aoba. His entire body is shaking and his fists are balled at his sides; Aoba can’t see his face.

The man lunges without warning, hands grabbing Koujaku’s shoulders hard enough to send the buttons of his dress shirt ricocheting onto the pavement. There’s a sudden, thunderous wave of shouting – Koujaku’s voice sounds foreign, a guttural, eerie roar that echoes louder than Aoba’s heartbeat in his own ears.

Terrified and dumbstruck, Aoba hugs himself back into the wall behind him. They fall with a numb thud, Koujaku crouched on top of him and already covered in blood. His fists smack into the man’s face, over and over, each hit paired with a sickly cracking noise and a grunt that doesn’t sound like it could possibly come from Koujaku. The man in leather writhes and squirms, shouting out in agony as he grabs again onto Koujaku’s shoulders and yanks the fabric hard enough to reveal the fervent, enflamed tattoos spiraling across his skin.

The tears come hot and fast in Aoba’s throat. They burn in his eyes and in his nose; he feels like he’s going to throw up. The man falls completely limp, arms and legs splayed beneath Aoba’s now almost completely unrecognizable boyfriend. Koujaku’s fists, covered in deep, wet scarlet, fall on a frozen face, purple and swollen with trauma. Koujaku’s knuckles have risen up his cheekbones and his eyes with hideous bruises, and the elongated nails on the tips of his fingers have slashed open the skin on his neck and his forehead. His hands are sagging off of Koujaku’s shirt, clinging desperately to the torn, bloody fabric.

His eyes roll towards Aoba. The fight is gone from them, bloodshot and wide, and they meet his with an unshakable intensity. Koujaku’s balled fingers slam into his eyebrow, hard enough to knock the light out of them, instantaneously.

He leans forward on both hands and retches onto the concrete. He’s so dizzy that he nearly falls into the puddle head-first, clutching instead at his stomach than the ground. He’s powerless; his entire body is numb, too overwhelmed to work his muscles. Helplessness coils deep in his stomach, shakes him from the bottom up.

Aoba’s voice finally surges back to him, strangled and pathetically quiet through the rough acid in his throat. “Koujaku! Koujaku!”

He stalls. His fingers lay open on the man’s face, relaxed from a fist as Aoba’s voice filters through his cloudy brain. His senses come to him lethargically, creeping through the fibers of his skin as he slowly returns to himself. “…Aoba?”

“Kou-Koujaku!” Aoba is hysterical; he hugs himself and rocks back and forth, sobbing and hiccupping as he stares at the now blue-haired man. He repeats his name through hyperventilating tears, stuttering desperately. “K-K-Koujaku! Koujaku!”

Koujaku’s eyes fall from Aoba to the dead man below him. Something clicks in his chest and he realizes what he’s done. He rolls off of the man and vomits onto the ground himself, shoulders shaking in disgust and fear. When he crawls up to Aoba, he’s sobbing too hard to speak straight.

With dirty hands, he pulls Aoba into his lap. Staining his hair murky red, he pushes Aoba’s head into his chest, smoothing his short, messy locks down against his neck. The movements are gentle, but Aoba flinches in remembrance.

“Shhh…” Koujaku coos through his own tears, shaking his head and tucking his chin into Aoba’s hair.

“You—You killed him!” Aoba’s voice is shrill and chaotic. He’s afraid, he’s so scared, but he hugs himself into Koujaku’s chest – because despite what he may have seen, Koujaku had always meant comfort, even as a child.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is really short and I don't honestly believe it's my best work, and for that I'm sorry -- finals week is halfway over, and between that and a con in a month I'm a little crunched for time. Regardless of that, everyone that reads this, thank you! x

They carried each other home. Both of them leaned on their partner, broad shoulder against thin, wet blood against clammy skin. Koujaku’s dirty fingers wrapped tightly around Aoba’s waist, either to give support or to take it, but Aoba’s dangle listlessly at his sides.

The walk home is long and painful; his stomach hurts, his head hurts, his eyes hurt. They wind through the Northern district, hiding in the mucky shadows and steering clear of the clogs of people coagulating the streets. It takes them almost an hour, but via unanimous, unspoken agreement, they keep their bloody clothes away from Rib and Scratch eyes alike.

Koujaku opens the door and Aoba stumbles over the threshold with aching, unwieldy feet. Compared to the muggy August heat, their apartment is almost chilly, air clean in contrast to the eons they had spent walking through the Northern district. As Koujaku locks the door behind them, Aoba rests up against the wall, smearing blood and grime along the smoky red paint. Neither of them comments, walking with Aoba’s forearm in Koujaku’s hand towards the bathroom.

The harsh bite of hot water brings tears to his eyes again. Aoba starts the shower but Koujaku invites himself behind the curtain; Aoba’s tears are audible, brittle sobs that claw their way up his throat and echo along the tiles, but Koujaku’s are silent under the sigh and gossip of the water. Koujaku’s hands brace on Aoba’s slim shoulders and his forehead dips down to rest against the top of his head. By now, they’re both slick and new, baptized by the shower head. Koujaku takes a huge, trembling breath, sighs it out against Aoba’s skull and lets his body wilt as he leans his body into his boyfriend’s. His Aoba’s.

They linger together, stagnant, fermenting in the blood-warm stream of water. It takes years for Koujaku to clear his head, thumbs kneading into Aoba’s shoulders like an arthritic baker’s into stiff dough. He lays soft, chaste kisses against Aoba’s glossy neck, butterfly-sized apologies from lips to skin. Aoba’s arms are braced on the wall in front of him and he idles, unresponsive – not against Koujaku’s affections, but because of how lost he was to respond.

Aoba finally relaxes into his touch – finally – when Koujaku brings his hands from his neck down to his sides. There’s the soft cushion of soap bubbles swaddling his fingers and Aoba lets his head lean back, cheek-to-cheek with his boyfriend. The water turns brown-black with blood and dirt, stains the sides of the bathtub.

Koujaku’s fingertips loop around Aoba’s hips and Aoba turns, chest-to-chest with Koujaku. He leans away, only for a heartbeat, to layer ridiculously overpriced shampoo into his palm. He slops it through Koujaku’s hair, gliding his hands down the side of his face in the process. Koujaku closes his eyes, giving a soft smile under the stray bubbles. “You are the clumsiest person I’ve ever met.”

“I’m helping.” Aoba’s voice is hoarse from screaming, vomiting and crying. Koujaku swoops down to peck his nose before he washes the shampoo out of his own hair. He doesn’t ask how Aoba is feeling; he doesn’t have it in him to answer.

 

Though his muscles protest vehemently, he plucks up Aoba, towel and all, after they step out of the shower. Dripping wet himself, he carries the smaller man to their bedroom – Aoba is either too tired or too accustomed to bellyache.

When they lay down together, they do so reverently: their limbs spindle fiber together, Aoba’s head on Koujaku’s chest and Koujaku’s hands in Aoba’s hair. They scratch against his scalp, soothing, as Aoba lets himself fully unwind into the mattress. He stretches out his muscles, working out the soreness and the disbelief that hibernates ice-cold in his chest. None of it felt real.

Beneath his cheek, Koujaku’s heart sounds spongy and muted, like it beat from miles away. When Aoba glances up, he sees that Koujaku’s eyes are already edged on his face, eyes and mouth haloed in intimate fondness. “Koujaku?”

“Mm?”

He doesn’t want to lose eye contact with him, but meeting his glance was difficult. There’s a battalion of incriminating thoughts, fearful and hectic, hiding behind his skull. “Promise me that you’ll never leave again.”

Koujaku’s fingers in Aoba’s hair stall and the eyes keen on his face fade. The memories from the night, numbed away by the heat of the shower and the give of Aoba’s skin, tide back into his mind. The silence swells between them like a buffer, an unbreachable line. They both know that he can’t promise anything. But he tries, anyways, in the best way that he can.

“I won’t leave you again, Aoba.”

Aoba wakes up to gentle prodding at the base of his neck. His eyes squeeze together like the small perturbance is the hugest offense anyone could deal unto him and cranes his neck up to Koujaku. “What?”

“I’m going to get up and make breakfast and clean a little bit.” His voice is low, quiet but not tired. He’s been up for a while. “I just wanted to let you know.”

“You woke me up for that?” His eyebrow raises. Koujaku’s eyes are bright, like he’s been crying, and it confuses Aoba; his body feels bogged down, heavy and hungover. He can’t process anything.

“I didn’t want you getting upset if you woke up and didn’t have me here.” Koujaku leans down and kisses Aoba’s forehead. Shimmying Aoba off of his chest, he stands quickly, leaves both the room and Aoba feeling cold.

Aoba lays inert for a moment, faceplanted into the pillow and chewing laboriously through his thoughts. After what was probably a decent thirty seconds, the connection sets in his mind: the night before, the gore, the blood and the promise.

Suddenly, Aoba is guilty. It surges in his chest, a wavecrest of tricky emotions and painful, numb memories. They were surreal, so much so that he didn’t want to believe in them. They gnawed at his conscience, and slowly Aoba comes to the epiphany of the crime committed.

Koujaku had killed someone.

Aoba almost never wore clothes in their apartment, due mostly to laziness. He stumbles towards the kitchen, naked, preoccupied, in search of his boyfriend, but instead finds him scrubbing earnestly at the blood Aoba had rubbed into the living room wall the night before.

“…That’s my mess.” He says, voice leaden with guilt. Suddenly, he wants to fix everything. “I’ll clean it, Koujaku.”

“Technically,” Koujaku doesn’t turn to him, focused on the stain in front of him rather than the guilt behind him. To his right, rain lashes against the front window in angry grey streaks. “It’s mine.”

 

Aoba makes a modest breakfast of eggs and toast before Koujaku can protest. They sit an awkward distance away from each other across the kitchen table, picking at their food. The air is thick and stagnant, a wear on Aoba’s lungs, and his eggs are rubbery in his mouth. His stomach is overflowing already, churning with hot, palpable grief, so he pushes the eggs aimlessly around his plate until Koujaku comments.

“Are you not hungry?”

“Not particularly.” He shakes his head and leans heavily on his elbows. “My stomach kind of hurts. And besides,” he points his fork at Koujaku’s plate, “you’re not eating either.”

Koujaku usually boasted of eating at least four eggs in the mornings; “A full breakfast is the key to having a full day.” He would say. Now, though, the pile of scrambled eggs on his plate lays untouched and room-temperature. “…I… guess I’m not all that hungry, either.”

“…Koujaku.” Aoba’s eyes stray back to his plate, lost in the cherry blossom design around the rim. “We need to talk.”

There was no question in his words or in the air. Koujaku pushes away his plate completely. “No we don’t.”

“Koujaku?” Aoba blinks quizzical eyes, looking up from Koujaku’s plate to the eyes he had avoided most of the morning.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Grabbing his plate, he pushes his chair back and stands. As he dumps his full mug of coffee into the sink, Aoba’s voice raises.

“There’s nothing to TALK about?” He shoves his own plate away, standing to look Koujaku in the eye. “Are you kidding? Koujaku, you can’t run away--”

“I’m not running away from anything.” There is a certain knife-edge in his voice that reminds Aoba exactly why they needed to talk. “There’s just nothing to talk about. Okay?”

“Not okay!” Aoba shakes his head. “Koujaku, last night you --”

“Did nothing.” He turns to Aoba, calm and collected in a way that made Aoba take a step back. “Alright? Nothing happened.”

“I’m not… letting this be ignored.” Aoba’s lips pulled into a thin line, his brows dipping down his forehead. “Koujaku, this ISN’T going to just go away. What you did—”

“Shut up, Aoba!” Suddenly, Koujaku is screaming, a sonic boom of explosive anger that leaves Aoba shaking. “Please, just – fucking shut up.”

They both realize, at the same moment, that Aoba is scared.

His hands are trembling and his shoulders are hunched forward; his back is pressed hard against the wall behind him. Koujaku’s eyes canvas him, dissect every muscle tremor, every anxious wrinkle in his forehead. The entirety of Aoba suddenly irritates him down to every molecule, infuriates him so much he wants to lean forward and smack the fear from his too-wide eyes.

There is a terrifying moment where Koujaku thinks he may. There is a horrifying, excruciating second, one that gets hung in his brain like syrup, where Koujaku realizes how easy it would be to hurt Aoba.

And so he leaves. With the quick snap of the door slamming behind him and the tremor that runs through the house afterward, Koujaku left Aoba, again, in the huge empty expanse of their home, alone and confused.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i think i might do a thing where i upload one of these every saturday or sunday? like once every weekend, if we're lucky.

His neck is strong but his face is soft. Both of his eyebrows are smooth against his forehead and his mouth is a slack crescent of gentle lips and quiet breathing. He looks happy, unperturbed.

Koujaku wonders if it’s an expression he’ll ever see again.

He wouldn’t touch him, despite how empty his hands felt. They itched to break the tension that radiated in waves from his skin and shoved him back, stranded him on the bedroom floor, but they stay balled on his knees. Aoba’s in a better place, one Koujaku refuses to cross into.

_Ruiner. ___

__It stuck to his soul like his insides were canvased with fly paper. It multiples exponentially, repeats over and over again, fills his veins and his stomach and leaves no room for his blood or his organs. His head is a battlefield caked with mines and death traps, an inaccessible plain._ _

__He feels trapped, by his brain and his body and his conscience. After a moment of difficult contemplation, he lays his cheek next to Aoba’s. From the floor he sits at perfect eye-level, so close to Aoba that Koujaku can feel his breathing against his own mouth. It’s delicate, like the whisper of wind across still water._ _

__Koujaku is an animal. He is wild, violently unrestrainable – dangerous. The type of rabid dog people kill because it’s too risky to keep alive._ _

__

__Binge drinking was never, honestly, one of Koujaku’s worst habits. Drinking was surely a habit he possessed, but one that in the past he had always kept tight control of. He laughs at the irony as he knocks back another bitter, burning shot._ _

__It was the dirtiest, least known bar in the entirety of Midorijima. On the counter, there’s a half-inch of dust and dried martini stains. The bar tender, a woman with wide eyes and crooked front teeth, slides him another glass knowingly; it creates a faint streak through the grime. The whiskey tastes like fire and it eats away at the monster growing in his stomach._ _

__Aoba had always meant stability. Aoba had always meant staying home on Sundays and thinking before acting. Even as children, there was something reliable about taking care of him, and something in the way he accidentally took care of Koujaku back. Now, he chases the thoughts away with fuzzy, numb alcohol. Guilt and fear swam in his veins, sharp as needles._ _

__“It’s getting late.” The bartender has pink hair and a pretty face. She smiles in a way that doesn’t show her teeth, and to Koujaku, it makes her look all the better. “Don’t you have someone to go home to?”_ _

__“If I wanted to go home to it, would I still be here?” She pours him a shot and he takes it; swigs it and swallows smoothly. By now, the taste is sitting in his mouth, stained. “Fuck it, I’ll buy the whole goddamn bottle.”_ _

__“Someone’s having a rough night.” She leans her elbows on the bar. “Talk to me.”_ _

__“You’re not getting any higher of a tip, sweetheart.” He drags the drink back in his throat, swallows laboriously._ _

__“Maybe I’m honestly interested? I’m Dizz, by the way.”_ _

__“And I’m really not. Sorry.” He’s harsher than he means to be; it’s for both her good and his own._ _

__“You’re really stubborn, aren’t you?” She shrugs, straightening up with a flick of her hair over her shoulder. She needs a cut; her split ends are hideous. The dark roots stretching up to her scalp are a cry for help and a new job._ _

__Koujaku wonders if he needs help. He wonders if he wants it – if he would take it if it were offered. He should cry for help, for reassurance, for faith, but he’s too numb from the alcohol._ _

__He asks her where she gets her hair done as he takes another mouthful. The bottle is significantly lighter in his hand and his head is significantly heavier on his shoulders. She says she dyes it herself. “I’m a hair stylist,” he offers. “maybe I could help.”_ _

__

__He can’t touch him. He reaches up both arms, grapples through the dark, hunting for the friction of skin on skin, but falls short. Each time, he is a hairsbreadth away: every inch he creeps forward, Aoba steps back._ _

__“Aoba!” It hurts; the chains dig into his ankles and strain against his neck, cut laser-thin wounds into his skin. The ground beneath his knees is cold and painfully hard. “Aoba!”_ _

__He can’t hear him. Aoba glances up, swivels his head around but fails to glance down and see the man groveling at his feet. The fiery intensity of disparity roars in Koujaku’s chest, almost as badly as the tattoos burning on his torso. His eyes are wide and bloodshot, desperate, pathetic. “Aoba, please!”_ _

__“Please my ass.” It isn’t his voice; it isn’t Aoba speaking to him. The world floods back to him, hue by hue, and Aoba is gone completely. Nauseous panic rises in his throat, but when Dizz tuts at him once again, the dots connect. “You’ve gotta go home babe, it’s three AM.”_ _

__He had passed out, presumably, mid-swig. The remains of the alcohol are pooled around his cheek, sticky and stale; it mixes with the pre-existing gunk on the counter and leaves a sour taste in his mouth._ _

__“In a minute,” He coughs, pushing himself up off of the bar. His chest burns from the cheapness of the whiskey and his head aches with the sharp beginnings of a migraine. “Let me just – get collected.”_ _

__“You’ve gotta go now.” The voice immediately behind him; cold, heavy words. “Come on, up and at’em –”_ _

__Large, strong hands grab onto his shoulders. They send an impulsive shock through his body, strong and burning hot. There’s a real, physical break in his chest, a bright and steamy pain; Koujaku can’t decide whether it’s in his heart or his ribs, but he knows that it hurts. From a splintered, burgeoning crack, it leaks anger and darkness and an influence he can’t stop._ _

__His fist collides with the bouncer’s temple of its own accord; the crack of his knuckle breaking echoes up his arm but doesn’t reach his mind. His knee jolts up into the man’s stomach, a driving force that sends him tipping forwards in his drunken vertigo. The man, bigger than he is, stumbles back two steps before rearing forward and slamming Koujaku onto the counter in one quick, mechanic movement. His nose smacks onto the wood, broken and bloody, and the fight drains out of him._ _

__Killing him wouldn’t be hard. It would be a snap of bone, a surge of pressure, a strike of metal. In an instant, he could be broken on the floor, helpless and pointless. Dying, in that moment, didn’t seem hard, either._ _

__Both of his hands swing up, joined at the small of his back, and the heels of his palms collide with the bouncer’s jaw. It’s enough to send him stumbling back onto a barstool that breaks beneath his bulk; Koujaku takes the chance, jams his heel hard into his chest, knocks the wind from his lungs and leaves him defenseless. He reaches not for his sword but for the discarded, mostly empty bottle of whiskey on the counter. It shatters against the lip of the bar in an explosion of broken glass, and finally, Dizz screams. The sound is sweet in his ears._ _

__Koujaku would dream about them growing old together. There was a time, months ago, where he obsessed over how they would wrinkle and how they would grow grey; how they would, for the rest of their lives, spend them together._ _

__“I’m going to fucking kill you.” When he brandishes the broken bottle, he prays for someone to kill him first._ _

__The bouncer, so much smaller than he had been just moments before, lays in a pool of broken glass, wood and blood. He covers his eyes with shaking, dirty hands: blood trickles from his nose, his palms and his temple. He gasps out, “Please!”_ _

__The plea rips into his chest, ricochets against his ribcage. “Please, I have a wife! Please!”_ _

__It hits home. His muscles deflate, the animosity evaporating in almost moments. He stands still long enough for two arms to wrap around his neck, bring him to the ground in a crash of limp body weight and the small twenty-something that pulled him down._ _

__It all happens in slow motion. The sudden loss of adrenaline has knocked the energy out of his bones and he lays, dazed, on the dirty hardwoods._ _

__“Someone call the cops!” Screams the man with both arms still around his neck. His voice is muggy, far away; his face is blurry and swathed in fog. “Or an ambulance!”_ _

__“I can’t!” Dizz shouts. The bar lights fade and to Koujaku, Dizz’s face is just a silhouette. “I’m only nineteen!”_ _

__He stumbles out of the bar in a thoughtless stupor that no one moves to stop. He drags heavy feet into heavy footsteps, treads a clumsy path out of the bar._ _

__He’s sorry. He’s so, so sorry._ _

__It’s raining. It comes down hard on his stinging shoulders, a freezing knife that razors into his clothes. The night is dark and tinted blue in the downpour; he sees everything through tunnel vision. Against the cold of the rain, his tears are hot on his cheeks._ _

__He stumbles halfway down the block, alone and unsteady from alcohol and mental exhaustion. Dizzy, he grabs a light pole for balance as he turns a corner. Slick from the rain, his hand slides against the metal and he falls hard, clapping his head against the concrete._ _

__Everything goes black. Fathomless, all-encompassing black that wipes his mind and erases his pain._ _

__

__The first thing he feels is the cold, wet concrete ground below him. He’s resurrected slowly, a gradual blossom of consciousness that stretches down from his head to the tips of his toes._ _

__The pain hits him next; he shifts onto his back and lets out a grunt of pain when he turns his head. His clothes are soaked from the rain and filthy from the streets, uncomfortable on his skin. There’s a purple, pronounced lump at his hairline and when he forces himself upright it nearly sends him sprawling back on the pavement._ _

__The sun is high above the crown of overconstruction. He drags himself up with shaking hands and wobbly knees, a painful, last-ditch effort to get home._ _

__He only has to walk ten minutes before he runs into Aoba. At his side is Mizuki, both worried and both silent beneath the early August sun._ _

__“Koujaku!” Aoba is startled. He sprints through the three feet between them, throwing himself forward before catching himself mid-swing: Koujaku is hurt. Koujaku is slumped forward and covered in blood and bruises and Aoba is now, more than ever, afraid._ _

__“Where have you been?” He gasps, instead reaching out a tentative hand to touch Koujaku’s arm. “Are you alright? What happened?”_ _

__“I went out to drink and I – I guess I banged my head.” He gives Aoba a small, reassuring smile, but can’t avoid the suspicion Mizuki casts over Aoba’s shoulder. “I think I fell sometime last night and I only just woke up.”_ _

__“You FELL?” Aoba is perplexed and afraid. Had he honestly? “And you were out for that long?”_ _

__“Why don’t we take you to the hospital?” Mizuki asks. “You seem like you’re in bad shape, Koujaku.”_ _

__“I’m fine,” He shakes his head. “Honestly. Really. Aoba can patch me up at home.”_ _

__He frowns. The suspicion is strong enough to radiate over Aoba’s head and into Koujaku’s. “Patch you up at home?”_ _

__“Minor injuries.” He shrugs. “I’m fine, honestly.”_ _

__“I think he’s right.” Aoba stands on his toes, leaning up to peer into Koujaku’s eyes. “I really agree.”_ _

__Koujaku holds a hand out to Aoba, searching for balance, but shakes his head. “Really – Really, I’m fine.”_ _

__“Two against one.” Aoba shrugs, pulling him forward gently. “Come on, it’ll be fine.”_ _

__

__He was so dehydrated he wasn’t able to hold down his late breakfast; the scratches on his face and his arms were infected and his knuckle was broken. “We’ll need to hold him overnight,” said the quiet, portly ER doctor. “Go home and get his essentials, we’ll take good care of him.”_ _

__Mizuki was the one who convinced him to go. “He’s asleep,” He said. “He won’t even know you left. I’ll walk you.”_ _

__Their apartment was empty and quiet. Mizuki waits in the living room and Aoba creeps into the house, letting Ren out of his bag and turning Beni on when he passes his bedroom._ _

__“So you found ‘im!” Beni caws, landing on Aoba’s shoulder. Ren circles his feet as he walks and Aoba has to take careful steps not to step on him._ _

__“I found him.” Aoba nods, opening the medicine cabinet and plucking Koujaku’s tooth brush out of the small, glass cup perched on the shelf. “He’s… we had to take him to the hospital.”_ _

__“What?!” Beni’s nails dig into Aoba’s shoulder. He flinches and flicks at him half-heartedly. “Take me! Take me right fuckin’ now!”_ _

__“You can come if you stay quiet.” Aoba sighs, shaking his shoulder in an attempt to shoo him off. Beni doesn’t take the hint._ _

__“What did he do!” He pecks once at Aoba’s ear. “Tell me!”_ _

__“He got drunk and passed out.” Aoba walks into their room and, thoroughly annoyed, picks Beni up and tosses him gently onto the bed. When he brings a hand up to his ear, blood smears a small line on his thumb. “Dammit, Beni –”_ _

__Angry and looking to scold the small bird, he turns quick and slams his hip hard on the bedside table. The pain immediately shoots through his leg and waters up in his eyes; he grits his teeth and stomps his uninjured leg, effectively knocking Koujaku’s cigarette box off of the nightstand._ _

__It spills and catches Aoba’s eye. Out of it scatters a handful of Pall Malls and a small, leather black box._ _


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is like a whole day late, of course right after i make a vow to get on a schedule. orz i've had some problems with my personal life, and because of that this chapter is cut short and idk if i'll even get a second chapter for strays up this week. i have a convention next weekend, so i may be on a hiatus until like. next wednesday or later. i'm sorry guys D:
> 
> this chapter is also really short, but hey -- I gave you guys cumshots.

“I just… don’t like the way this is going.”

The hospital is bright and colorless – Mizuki’s face is a burst of rich life against the white walls and pale hallways. His eyes are severe, staring down at you with an overwhelming worry. Like Koujaku, he has a web of light wrinkles branching out from his eyes. Unlike Koujaku, he also has the beginnings of frown lines framing his lips. For a man so young, his face is weathered and tight-lipped; he wears the uneasiness like a veteran wears his retired fatigues.

“This is the second time he’s disappeared?” His voice is gentle, hesitant as the hand he touches to Aoba’s shoulder. “He’s acting reckless, and I’m worried.”

“Mizuki.” Aoba raises his own hand, drops it over Mizuki’s. His smile is soft, but completely genuine. “I… I really, really appreciate it. I do. But I just don’t agree with what you’re saying.”

Mizuki shakes his head, frustrated. The lines around his furrowed eyebrows deepen, and his cupids bow yanks up from his lower lip. “Aoba – I don’t want to see him hurt you.”

The words thud in his chest like stones to the bottom of a river. He replies in a reserved, feeble voice, ambivalent against the glossy smile that challenges Mizuki’s words. “He isn’t hurting me.”

“But he is.” Mizuki squeezes his shoulder. His fingers leave a crater against Aoba’s shoulder, an inescapable plea for cooperation. “He is, and I can tell.”

Something about the raw concern Mizuki shows him hits a nerve. All of the frustration, anxiety and imposing dread from the last week roars up in Aoba like sparked embers.

“He needs me.” He takes a cautious step back from Mizuki. “And I need him.”

“I need you to be safe.” Mizuki counters. He doesn’t step forward like Aoba expects him to. “I’m just worried about you.”

“And I appreciate it,” Aoba repeats. Mizuki was grinding his heel into Aoba’s patience.  
“But we need each other. And while I’m really appreciate and happy and glad that you’re looking out for me, I’m not going to abandon him because you’re worried.”

Why won’t you just listen?” He hisses, angling his shoulders to tower over Aoba. "Aoba, there is something WRONG with him, nothing's right about this at all. This situation- something's very, very wrong about it. And, it's just, it's getting on my nerves. I'm worried about you – he seems, he seems dangerous."

He was jump roping on Aoba’s sinewy, glass-thin restraint, and finally it broke. The hallway is quiet, lined in tile and open spaces, and so when Aoba yells, his voice echoes around the entire floor. “And who are you to talk about being dangerous?”

He jabs his forefinger into Mizuki’s chest; pale seaglass eyes widen at the sudden aggression. “Who are YOU to talk about being bad for people? Who almost ruined my life in the FIRST place?”

Aoba is shaking, adrenaline coursing through his veins with a hot, infectious intensity. His muscles petrify and his hands ball into fists; he takes another step back, turning away completely, walking into Koujaku’s hospital room and slamming the door behind him. Mizuki disappears with a loud, abrupt snap.

“What was that about?”

Aoba jumps at the voice, guilty. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I didn’t want to interrupt.” Koujaku’s sitting up in his hospital bed, coherent and clear-minded. He’s civil, calm – if maybe he just closed his eyes, he could believe the last week didn’t happen.

“Mizuki was just being an asshole.” He shakes his head, perching on the edge of the bed gently. Koujaku takes up most of the bed, all broad shoulder and big hands, but when Aoba sits next to him Koujaku shifts his feet away to make more than enough room. “It’s not a big deal,” he says instead, rehearsed, and raises the back of his hand to wipe at his eyes.

“Hey,” Koujaku leans forward delicately, careful of the IV dug into his arm. Both hands rise, grabbing Aoba around the waist and scooting him across the thin bed, turning Aoba’s head into his chest. Aoba turns, nuzzling into Koujaku’s shoulder and letting out a breathy, trembling cry. He’s the kind of warm that wraps around Aoba and soothes him without explicit action. Koujaku’s fingers draw thin, compact circles on the small of Aoba’s back as he curls up both of his legs against Koujaku’s chest.

He’s back; Koujaku is back and okay and safe, and in all honestly Aoba thinks he’s crying most out of exhausted relief. Koujaku is back and wants to marry him.

Koujaku covers Aoba’s face in warm kisses; presses them against his forehead and his cheeks and his lips, eyebrows wrinkled with simple, mindless happiness. Aoba leans up to return them, rocking his hips against Koujaku’s chest to gain momentum. The movement sparks something between them and immediately, a careless kind of friction; Koujaku’s hands thread through the short, messy spikes at the base of Aoba’s neck, shooting tickles of jittery pleasure down his spine.

Tear-stained and overwhelmed, Aoba crashes his hips down hard on Koujaku’s. In his throat kindles a familiar, croaky groan that goes straight to Aoba’s dick. Koujaku’s blunt fingertips are coarse and strong as they lift up the hem of Aoba’s t-shirt, tug it over his head. He dips down again, pushing their lips together and whimpering when Koujaku nips and sucks at his lower lip. Long, gangly arms rest on Koujaku’s shoulders, propping Aoba up above him. Staring up at Aoba with half-lidded eyes, Koujaku smoothes his palms up the curves of his hips, appreciating the ebb and flow of his skin and bones.

Aoba leans down, touching his forehead to Koujaku’s, as he undid the front of his hospital gown. It was waxy and thin in his hands, and it gave to his fingers like tissue paper. “That works,” he laughs, tearing the blue paper down the middle and exposing the green and purple of Koujaku’s chest.

The bruises bloom like dismal, stormy flowers along the slope of his skin; each rib stands out in a stark line of black-blue against the green and purple, a map of his strength even beneath the injuries. Aoba’s fingers glaze across the discolored skin, and a small, sad smile stalls his mind. After a moment of bleak thoughtlessness, Aoba shimmies down Koujaku’s legs, low enough to kiss each swirl of dark color. He touches hot, wet, gentle lips to his skin, just next to his nipple, glances up at him from beneath his eyelashes.

Through the sheets and against Aoba’s leg, Koujaku gets hard.

He rings his lips softly around Koujaku’s nipple, flicking his tongue across the bud of skin. Koujaku’s shoulders press back into the pillow and a sweet sigh slips through his teeth. “Nnnnot fair,” he shakes his head, glowering up at the ceiling. “I can’t get on top of you.”

He sucks once before letting go with the wet noise of smacking lips. “Well, then I guess I’ll just have to stay on top of you.”

“…This is new,” he comments, clearing his throat and finally looking back down to Aoba.

“It is.” Aoba wriggles in his lap, undoes his pants and fights to get them off. He’s wearing royal blue and yellow plaid underwear, and they tent around his very obvious, very pressing erection.

Despite this, he lays himself across Koujaku’s legs, flicking the remnants of the hospital gown aside and immediately wrapping his hand around Koujaku’s dick. It’s branding hot in his palm, heavy and absolutely mouth-watering. He kisses the base, closes his eyes and gives a warm sigh against his skin. Koujaku bristles from the feeling.

Aoba leans his cock to the side, allowing him ample room to slick the tip of his tongue up the prominent, pulsing vein mottled on the underside. Koujaku gives another hiss of quiet enthrallment, shifting his hips in Aoba’s hands. Aoba pumps his hand up and down Koujaku’s dick, jerking his erection in his palm and earning a subdued moan. He dribbles pre across Aoba’s hand, watery and clear.

He kisses Koujaku’s tip once, flicking his tongue across the salty cum and smiling sweetly up at his boyfriend. Koujaku opens his mouth to ask a question, to comment on how pretty Aoba’s eyes are, to say how much he loves him, but Aoba sucks Koujaku’s tip into his mouth and all that drips from his lips is a drawn-out, deep moan.

Koujaku is huge in Aoba’s mouth; he bobs his head down his erection, each time catching more of his length. He manages to get a little over half in his mouth before he reaches his spacial limit, breathing deep through his nose and constricting his cheeks around Koujaku’s dick. Aoba’s hand falls between his own leg, slipping his thumb across his tip and whimpering around the cock in his mouth.

One hand wraps around his base, squeezing and twisting, as the other scratches up and down his inner thigh. Koujaku gives increasingly loud, artless moans that tinge the air around Aoba’s ears. His toes curl at Aoba’s sides and both of his hands thread through Aoba’s hair, giving a soft, tame yank to it.

He finishes quickly, with an abrupt, choking grunt that scrapes his throat like unpolished stone. All of the air slips from his lungs, gets sucked into the overwhelming pressure in his abdomen. He yanks back on Aoba’s hair, hard, hard enough to slip his mouth off of his dick; “A-Ah!” he cries out, shooting cum across Aoba’s lips and cheeks. It strews across his skin, milky and thick, and Aoba opens his mouth to catch it.

“Oh…” Koujaku sighs, hands in Aoba’s hair loosening and stroking the pale blue locks. “Oh, come here, sugar.”

Aoba shifts, lets Koujaku wipe the cum off of his face with his hospital gown. “Oh, God, you’re so beautiful, you’re so beautiful…”

Aoba’s body is still pent up, jittery, and when Koujaku leans Aoba’s back to his chest, it only takes him a moment to realize that he isn’t done. The hand that immediately fists his cock is earnest, strong, enough to make Aoba yelp.

He jerks Aoba off fast and hard, the way he likes after waiting for Koujaku to finish first. Aoba half-sighs half-screams, writhing against Koujaku’s chest so fervently he bumps his elbow against Koujaku’s ribs. He ruts his hips up into Koujaku’s hands, searches desperately behind him for something to grab onto. The orgasm comes quick and it overwhelms him so harshly that he ends up going limp, jerking his hips up and arching his back against Koujaku as he rides it out, twitching and shaking and drooling from his gaping mouth.

There is a precious moment of silence where they both catch their breath, where two minds agree to let the moment simmer. The hospital lights are bright and fluorescent, and they pale Aoba’s thighs against Koujaku’s hands. He leans up and nuzzles Aoba’s shoulder, pressing a chaste kiss to his neck.

“…I found something,” Aoba pants, breathless, turning to catch Koujaku’s eye.

“Found something?”

“In your cigarette box.” He smiles, a giddy, dumb smile, but Koujaku’s face falls.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> um. sads? sads.

“…What?” Aoba asks, turning gingerly to face his boyfriend. He swivels his hips, shifting to straddle Koujaku’s instead. Koujaku’s eyes glance down, away from Aoba’s eyes, focus on the slant of his sharp collar bones and the days-old hickey on the slope of his neck. To bide time, he gathers up the hospital blankets from around his feet and wraps them around Aoba’s waist.

“What’s wrong?” Aoba ducks to catch Koujaku’s eye.

“…You found the ring, right?”

“Yes?” Aoba bites his lip. Koujaku’s bangs are pulled back into his pony tail, away from his face. Both eyes match Aoba’s, see the dancing, electric anxiety in them, and he immediately feels guilty. “Koujaku, what’s wrong with that?”

Koujaku can’t find the words; he shifts uncomfortably, rubs his palm across the back of his neck. “Aoba, that was… hidden for a reason.”

The realization smacks Aoba in the face with force that nearly has him toppling over in Koujaku’s lap. He feels like a pathetic, presumptuous moron, one that has now backed himself into a corner and can’t find a way out. He can’t decide if he should feel angry or embarrassed, or if he should feel nothing at all and forget the incident happened, give the ring back and move on.

After a very long, stupefying moment of rough contemplation, he goes with angry. Leaning away from Koujaku, he crosses his arms. “Okay. Okay, so – you bought me an engagement ring without the intent of giving it to me?” His eyebrows push down. “…Assuming it WAS for me, right?”

Koujaku rolls his eyes so hard his head knocks slightly to the left. “Of COURSE it was for you, and of course I – bought it for you, and with the intent of giving it to you, that’s definitely what I was thinking when I bought it, but I bought it three months ago and –”

“And?” Aoba huffs, demanding an answer before Koujaku could possibly supply one. “And what, you just – you don’t want to anymore?”

Aoba was being ridiculous; Aoba was being absolutely ridiculous and they both knew it, but he hadn’t slept and was drawn thin, stretched out like a rubber band looped around outstretched wrists. Overall, he felt he was being given the short end of the stick.

“Don’t… phrase it like that.” Koujaku shakes his head, presses his lips together into a narrow line. He closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Don’t say it like I don’t love you enough to marry you, because I do.”

Something in his voice makes Aoba’s anger soften around the edges, but the evasion pushes another button. He’s less angry, but still angry enough to badger Koujaku into a straight answer. “So you don’t want to.”

“I can’t.” Koujaku touches the back of his hand to Aoba’s cheek, stretching the IV between them. His hands are strong and swift, but between the scars and nicks his skin is soft and intimate as he touches it to Aoba’s cheek. His voice is low, subdued, a tone Aoba is all too familiar with as the calm before the storm. The tenor, low and angry, is a warning sign, subliminal and intentional; he should stop. He knows he should. But Aoba keeps pushing.

“Why not?” He’s being ridiculous; he can’t force Koujaku into marrying him. But after the past weeks, after worrying and crying and spreading himself so thin he thought he may melt right into the air, he deserved straight answers. “Why not? Koujaku, what is – what’s going ON?”

Something snaps, and Aoba can see it in Koujaku’s face. His upper lip twitches and the wrinkles around his eyes deepen, a dark shadow splashed across his features as he rears up and yells in a way that sends Aoba toppling back onto the hospital bed.

“You KNOW what happened last time this got out of hand!” His bears his teeth around his words, elongated and arrow head-sharp. “You know what I did, Aoba – you know what happened, you’ve seen what I – what this body – you – you’re acting like a fucking idiot – you KNOW what happens and we KNEW this was going to get bad but you’re being so stubborn you won’t look right in fucking front of you! You can’t see this from my perspective!”

Laying on his back, staring up at his snarling, barking boyfriend, Aoba is stunned. A thick vein pops and throbs at his temple, his cheeks and ears turn scarlet – but tears are born in his eyes, soft as dew in the lavender morning light. Aoba is terrified, but an exponentially growing part of him is guilty. “You know what I did to my mother, Aoba! You know! You know but you still aren’t understanding, you aren’t listening to me!”

Immediately, Aoba deflates. The anger tensing up his muscles drips out of him like a pipe that had sprung a very large, very sudden leak. The sweltering, stifling heat bleeds out of his pores and in rushes the jarring numbness that comes with guilt-ridden worry.

“…Koujaku.”

He curls in on himself, grabs his elbows and tries to melt into his pillow. His face is red, cheeks glimmering with tears, and his white-knuckled fists are shaking around his arms.

“I don’t want this to happen!” He rocks himself back and forth, whimpers as he shakes his head and digs his chin into his bare chest. “I don’t want to fucking do this! I don’t want this to happen!”

“Koujaku.” Aoba climbs back into his lap in a rush, cups his face in both hands. He runs his thumb across Koujaku’s cheekbone but the older man shakes his head violently.

He screams again but it slips into the air, smacks Aoba in the face, as a flurry of terrified sobs. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

Warm, sticky wetness dribbles onto Aoba’s thigh, and surprises him enough to glance down. The blood from Koujaku’s forearms blooms across his sleeves and stains his hospital gown, drools down onto Aoba’s jeans and bleeds through them. Aoba gasps, reaching for Koujaku’s hands and yanking them away swiftly but gently.

Blood stains his nails in thick, angry crescents. Aoba runs his fingertips over his nailbeds, glances up at him with wide, worried eyes. They file into sharp points, severe as Aoba swipes the pads of his index finger across them.

“Hey, stop that.”

Koujaku is sobbing in hysterical, jagged pants, rocking himself back and forth. Aoba shakes his head, bringing Koujaku’s hand to his chest and pressing his palm against the dull, even beat of his heart.

“What’s that?”

“Your – your heartbeat.” Koujaku takes a deep breath.

“Match it.” Aoba coaches, using his own hand to tap Koujaku’s against his chest.

Aoba’s heart beats once; Koujaku takes a shaky, labored breath, and exhales when he feels it beat a second time. Guided by its cadence, he slowly calms, lets his shoulders slump. He pulls Aoba into his lap, strong-armed and clammy-palmed.

“…A string of serial murders have been cropping up around Midorijima. According to criminologists, the attacker’s calling card is severe beatings to the face and chest that happen in the middle of the night.”

The hands on Aoba’s waist tighten and two rows of fingernails prick his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt. Aoba rubbernecks, swinging his eyes around to the TV where they flash a sketch of a man with uneven bangs and a dark pony tail.

_He needs me._

The words pulse through Aoba’s veins like an instinct, one that stamps down the fearful, flighty anger. Like a strike of lightning, doubt flashes in his chest and leaves him blinded by the sudden wariness it leaves behind.

That day, in that hospital bed, Aoba loses a sliver of the trust he had in Koujaku, and in his chest it leaves a hole that threatens to swell.

But he loves him; he loves him so much that he can ignore the bitter, guilty feelings that throb painfully persistently in his chest. He loves the man he used to know, the man he wanted to marry, the man who always knew how to make him laugh, more than life itself. Aoba loved Koujaku so much it made him want to cry, and he couldn’t leave.

He didn’t want to mistrust him. The insuppressible fact rears up in his chest, throwing itself against his ribcage and refusing to be ignored, and brings tears to Aoba’s eyes.

Koujaku yanks his IV out of his arm, tape and all, and the blood immediately spills across his bedsheets. He leaps out of bed and strips off his pastel paper gown, stands naked in front of Aoba as he tears it into strips with his teeth. He wraps the mutilated fabric around the small wound on his forearm, stops the bleeding long enough for him to slip into the clothes Aoba had laid across the armchair next to Koujaku’s hospital bed.

“Hey.” Aoba reaches out a hand for him after rebuttoning his pants. “Hey…”

Koujaku turns to him, eyebrows turned up and mouth turned down. Aoba opens both arms and immediately, Koujaku swoops into them, hugging Aoba so hard he plucks him up off of the bed. Koujaku’s arms are familiar, warm, and he smells of the same cologne he’s worn for the past fifteen years. Aoba’s toes dangle off of the floor and for a fraction of a second, he can pretend everything is normal, and he doesn’t hurt so bad.


End file.
